That is why saint Ron went to Philadelphia - not PA - first?

More importantly, one doesn't have to cross the line on race to get the message out.  As we've already seen, the middle name, the Muslim father, and the Indonesian childhood can easily be manipulated into a first-class insinuation that Obama's some sort of Al-Qaida Manchurian candidate.  A Obama-supporting blogger here in Nashville recently reported that he was asked if it was true that Obama has "Muslim blood"[!!!].  You don't have to connect the dots; if voters think racial categories are appropriate analytic tools, you just hand them the puzzle, and they'll do the rest.

first of all we only need to look back at the ads run against harold ford jr in 06 to see that republicans have no problem going negative on black democrats...  and using racist innuendo to do it...

but if you wanna know the single biggest reason conservatives have a an overall positive image of a black presidency, look no further than 24's president david palmer...  these folks are all about the iconic image over reality...

republicans will be torn for about a minute...  but in the end they'll take the route of painting obama as a uber-liberal and someone way too far outside the norm to represent the country...  and use subtle hints to keep white men thinking about race as they enter the voting booth...

Go wobbly? Probably not. But will he earn our respect? Let's just say that he has a much better shot at it than does Hillary. (And the polls have consistently borne this out.) Not all Republicans are fire-breathing right-wingers who pine for Reagan 2.0 and hang on Rush's every word. Lots of us are independent-minded, libertarian-leaning and desperate for a candidate who can create a new national narrative. Obama is the only candidate in the field right now who can offer that. I don't agree with him on every issue (for instance, I favor an approach to Iraq that's more in line with Joe Biden's, who was my first choice), but I think many Republicans will appreciate the honest, non-partisan way he's come to most of his positions. Just the way he's run his campaign is starkly different from what we've seen before and that, in itself, earns high marks from many of us who've braced ourselves for a year in which Democrats look to avenge the nasty swiftboating of 2004.

It's worth noting that I've even opened up my wallet for Obama's campaign, and that's the first time I've done that for any national candidate of either party. If the Democrats have the good sense to nominate this guy, they'll get not just my respect, they'll get my continued support, my hard work and, most critically, my vote. Why squander that?

Obama has a problem-- not a small problem but potentially a huge problem-- with hispanics, also asian-americans. McCain has good cred with Hispanics and could, if he's clever about it, steal CO and NM from under our noses. Also, he'd be very strong in FL, esp if Crist is his VP.

Obama needs to figure out how to win over hispanics especially, and fast. How do you say, "achilles' heel" in Spanish?

Peggy's setting the stage for when some hideous slur crawls out of the muck and into the echo-chamber. McCain will say "Who me? I didn't do it" and the bottom-feeders like Rush or Malkin will say "So the fact that he's black means we can't criticize him without being tarred as racists? How dare you play the race card? Double standard! First Amendment!" This meta-analysis, rather than the slur itself, will dominate coverage as people fall over themselves to proclaim that (a) he didn't play the race card, they did; (b) they didn't play the race card, he did; (c) can't we move beyond this nonsense?; (d) "this bodes ill for Obama as he has come dangerously close to channelling Al Sharpton as the controvery raged"; (e) this bodes ill for Republicans who have proved themselves to be racists; (f) see, see - they just said that you, Mr. Decent American Colorblind Voter, are a racist! (g) no we didn't; (h) yes, you did, etc..

On the Hispanic thing, my theory (which could well be wrong) is that Obama's message just hasn't reached them yet. As Mark Schmitt noted in the American Prospect (and others have noted as well) "wine-track" candidates like Obama always do better among people who are engaged in the process early, and more likely to form impressions of the candidates based on a little research instead of the little bits of news that make it onto TV or the front page of the newspapers. Obama has moved into new territory for wine-trackers, scoring victories deep into the primaries, and picking up less engaged voters in the demographics usually dominated by the beer-trackers.  If Obama does better among Hispanics in Texas than he did in Cal,  we'll have a better idea.

Per usual Peggy is off the mark, but I've suspected for some time that stereotype would actually be Obama ally against the GOP. My thought went like this, their standard mode of attack starts with (insert name of Al Gore like democrat here) is a godless elitist.  In democratic circles  Obama may be the "wine track" guy but everywhere else he's a black guy. Making him (from the point of stereotype) neither godless nor elitist. Not a republican-proof vest but something.

I think Noonan is pulling the collective leg of the Left here. Playing back to them what they want to believe.

The Republicans know that the very factors that make Democrats, especially the young and elite, love Obama -- his sophisticated, cool persona, his exotic cultural history, his urbane grace, his soaring appeals to communal emotion, and his often too subtle and indirect mode of debate (the razor blades woven oh so carefully into such an intricate web of uplift) -- will communicate to many

Americans that "he's not one of us."  The issue of race will never have to be raised. Because, as it has been in the last two elections, the issue of class will be front and center.

Obama is a MUCH more graceful speaker than either Gore or Kerry. But lack of grace was never really their problem. (Grace is not much valued in American politics -- think; both Bushes, LBJ, Nixon and Carter. None were graceful speakers. Reagan and Clinton were better communicators, but not because their speaking style was graceful.) The problem for both Gore and Kerry was one that Obama shares; what his speaking style communicates about class. Their speech telegraphed their membership in the elite, in a way that Bush's speech, despite his even more elite background, never did.

The irony is that Obama's success as a black man has required that he communicate in a way that would impress and comfort white elites. But that same communication style will be, as it has been for other Democrats, a disadvantage against a bumbling but more "plain spoken" Republican.

This is absurd.  You're not supposed to attack a candidate anyway.  You're supposed to attack his ideas.  And, Obama's ideas are emminently attackable.  

He's hard to attack as a human being, not because Obama is black, but because he is an attractive, accomplished, worthy, self-made man.  

Th Clintons on the other hand, are easy to attack as human beings because as human beings they have proved to be so reprehensible.  And we've had 16 years of observing and remembering all the things that makes us dislike them.

Peggy Noonan, lovely writer that she is, has a tendency to go frequently a little wobbly herself.

esmense, I disagree with you on one of your points.  Gore and Kerry were much lacking in grace because they are clumsy men, uncomfortable in their own skins.  And, frankly, they both give off the aura of big phonies.

Obama is genuinely graceful, and if he is a phony, he is one hell of a good actor.  So, it doesn't matter.

esmense, dumb me, I misunderstood you.  You're saying that Kerry and Gore lacked grace was not their problem because it is not a valued attribute in American politics.  

Point well taken.  And correct.

In all the comparisons of Obma to JFK, epopel seem to froget that he only beat Nixon by a sliver.  And if you believe the Daly Machine stuffed the Chicago ballot boxes, he didn't beat him at all.

I have no doubt that Jack would have creamed Goldwater.  But not so much because of his charm-- the gold standard for all 20th Century White Houses-- but because Goldwater was neither the right personality for the times, nor were his ideas, in the way that he presented them.

esmense, I believe your way off in this statement:  "The irony is that Obama's success as a black man has required that he communicate in a way that would impress and comfort white elites."

First of all, he was raised in Hawaii, went to Honolulu's exclusive prep school and then continued his education in the Ivy League.  It's not as if he is "black" in the sense that Americans, including blacks, traditionally think of it.  Which is a class and region thing, not a race thing.

What candidate of any color would be taken seriously for the presidency if he spoke and carried himself  like an untutored, unrefined member of a subclass.  

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were never in danger of living in the White House, not because they are black, but because they don't come close to transcending their class and parochial circumstances.  Nor, do they want to, as it serves them well with their natural and chosen constituency,.

One last thing.  Had lunch with one of my best friends today, a East Coast liberal, transplanted now as a decade long Marin Country liberal.

He points out that Marin has gone for Obama vs. the Clintons for the same reason they go for Whole Foods over Safeway or Macs over PCs.  Obama is an upscale brand, appealing to the better educated and better off.

The Clintons are down-market.  And in a country where a lot of people who aren't actually wealthy aspire to upper middle class consumption values, that's a problem.

It's especially a problem in the modern media, which unlike the old working class reporters of old, are embarrassingly upper bourgeois in their sensibilities, prejudices, and affectations.  Of course the media would love Obama.  And can hardly keep from showing it.

They'll go low, they'll have to at a certain point, and Obama will win anyway. It won't work and it will make them look worse. Not all Republicans are racists and/or morons.  

ChanRobt --

"What candidate of any color would be taken seriously for the presidency if he spoke and carried himself  like an untutored, unrefined member of a subclass. "

George W. Bush.  (He isn't "untutured" of course. His public political speech is much more less "tutored" than his private speech.)

"Of course the media would love Obama.  And can hardly keep from showing it."

Of course they love him now. But they love McCain even more, and they've loved him longer. Obama's love from the media is based in the the fact that, now, in the primaries, he is the more right of center candidate running away from the party's working class base to garner the votes of the affluent independents and Republicans. (One reason he is able to do this in a Democratic primary is because, as an African American, he can secure that significant part of the party's base support on the basis of hope and aspiration rather than specific policies -- which those more elite voters would  object to). But to win in the general election Obama will have to support policies that appeal to and serve the interest of the Democratic party's downscale base again. He will have to work to bring out not only the African American community, but also working class women and youth, immigrants, the elderly and poor, organized labor, etc. Groups whose interests conflict with those of the "upper bourgeois" and the corporations who sign their paychecks.

The media didn't and doesn't treat the Clintons, or Gore, or Kerry, or Dean or just about any prominent Democrat you can name (outside a few, mostly Southern and midwestern conservatives who can be counted on to work with the Republicans), with dirision and disrepect because of who they are. They treat them that way because of who they represent.

The Democratic Party never seems to get this. They keep trying to find candidates who will meet the approval of the media, when they would do better to find candidates who meet the approval of the people the party claims to represent. People strong enough to stand up to all the abuse th that representation will earn them.

One of the reasons people see the party as "weak" is because they see that Democrats are often more afraid of the media than they are supportive of their own constituencies.

Sometimes outsiders just have fresh perspectives. I think Noonan, Sullivan, Brooks and Buchanan, for instance, have a much better take on Obama than people like Jake Tapper, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, etc..

I don't think they're playing games, I think they have fresh eyes.

Does anyone remember Hugh Sidey? He was a kind of lap dog journalist for Time who covered the White House. Some of these pro-Hillary, anti-Obama pieces, like the hit-piece by Richard Cohen, are something you'd expect from a Sidey, or even earlier, a Walter Lippmann, with a lot of insider lingo.

The blogosphere, to me, is all about fresh eyes, outsider perspectives. I don't care what Richard Cohen thinks.